EU President Donald Tusk warned Thursday that divisions between western member states and their newer eastern partners were complicating efforts to solve the deepening migrant crisis.

"There is a divide ... between the east and the west of the EU. Some member states are thinking about containing the wave of migration, symbolised by the Hungarian (border) fence," Tusk said.

"Others want solidarity in advocating a so-called obligatory basis for (migrant) quotas. The key challenge is to find for them all a common, yet ambitious, denominator," he said before talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on the crisis.